Wonders of scholarship
Every once in a while I'm struck by a report on scholarship that makes
me marvel about the world. Last week (1/9/07) it was a
NYT Science Times article about
restoring an ancient Egyptian mud fortress. Two things.
First, a casual reference to the enormous time depth of Egyptian
civilization:
It was in the 26th century B.C., a few
generations later, that even more powerful kings erected the majestic
pyramids at Giza, the last surviving of the so-called seven wonders of
the ancient world.
Then a list of the experts on the project:
William Remsen, a preservation
architect; Anthony Crosby, a specialist in mud-brick and earthen
architecture; and Conor Power, a structural engineer
It's a wonderful world that has specialists in mud-brick and earthen
architecture in it. (Structural engineers I knew about, of
course, and I have a friend who's a preservation architect, but the
mud-brick and earth specialization was news to me.)
zwicky at-sign csli period stanford period edu
Posted by Arnold Zwicky at January 14, 2007 01:11 PM